Needed, wider debate

By legalising ‘passive’ euthanasia but allowing Ms Aruna Shanbaug to live, the Supreme Court has shown both compassion and a commitment to progressive measures to tackle the sensitive issue. Ms Shanbaug, a victim of brutal sexual assault who has remained in a permanent vegetative state for 37 years now, could have qualified for mercy killing by the apex court’s definition had her ‘next friend’ pleaded for that. But with the court holding that the ‘next friend’ was not so much the petitioner — a journalist who sought euthanasia for her and has written movingly about her plight — but the staff and doctors at KEM Hospital in Mumbai who have cared for her all these decades and opposed the petition, she will now live. The Supreme Court is right in laying down that ‘passive’ euthanasia could be accepted in exceptional circumstances provided certain guidelines are followed, including seeking the opinion of the kith and kin or the ‘next friend’ of a patient who is in no position to take a decision on his or her own. The verdict has opened the possibility of mercy killing through the discontinuation of life-support systems. This is a pragmatic position to take because people living in a vegetative state or who are brain-dead deserve to die in dignity.
The Supreme Court’s verdict goes beyond the Aruna Shanbaug case because it brings into its ambit even those instances where the patient is in a position to state his or her view. But even here, while primacy will be accorded to that opinion, the guidelines the court has structured will play an important role in deciding the issue. For instance, any such appeal for ‘passive’ euthanasia will have to be scrutinised and cleared by the High Court of the respective State. The High Court, in turn, will depend on the expert medical opinion of a team of doctors for its decision, besides taking into account factors such as the patient’s agony. Naturally there are legitimate concerns that the option to seek ‘passive’ euthanasia could be misused by unscrupulous individuals, but if sufficient care is taken by the judiciary and doctors are not willing to be co-opted in a criminal act, the scope for misuse and abuse can be minimised if not entirely eliminated. At the same time, perhaps a wider public debate is called for following the judgement. There are moral and ethical aspects which cannot be — indeed, must not be — ignored while rushing to embrace ‘passive’ euthanasia. As readers of this newspaper have pointed out, a humane society based on ethical values cannot declare any living person, no matter in what state he or she may be, as having ceased to enjoy the right to stay alive. This argument is not without merit. After all, human beings are not disposable commodities to be discarded once they lose their utility or become a liability.